I crossed a narrow gangplank as the bright lights from the nearby Munch museum reflected off the surface of the city’s main waterway, the Oslofjord. Here, I spent a few hours in a self-service, wood-sided floating sauna, inside which it was nearly 80C. A cloud of steam puffed above my overheated body as I made my way into the frigid inlet, whose temperature was somewhere in between the sauna and the night sky. Over the course of the two-hour reservation, I took some five or six turns between sweating and dipping, reflecting on just how seamlessly Oslo encourages a life well lived.
Just 12 hours after I’d arrived, I already felt an easy kinship with the city. Perhaps it was the calm streets or the way Vulkan distilled so much of Oslo’s essence into a single square. In a world of frenetic city breaks, Oslo offers something rare: clean air, a slower pace and a blueprint for the cities of tomorrow.
